Gustaf KossinnaGustaf Kossinna (28 September 1858 – 20 December 1931) was a German
linguist and professor of German archaeology at the University of
Berlin. Along with
Carl SchuchhardtCarl Schuchhardt he was the most influential German
prehistorian of his day, and was creator of the techniques of
Siedlungsarchaeologie, or "settlement archaeology."[1] His
nationalistic theories about the origins of the Germanic peoples
influenced aspects of
NaziNazi ideology; nevertheless, he was rejected by
the party as their official prehistorian.[1]

Contents

1 Life
2 Material culture and ethnicity
3 Nationalistic use of archaeology
4 See also
5 References
6 Further reading

Life[edit]
Kossinna was a Germanized Mazur. He was born in Tilsit, East Prussia,
Kingdom of Prussia. His father was a teacher at the secondary-school
level. As a child he learned Latin and piano.
As a university student he matriculated at a number of universities,
studying classical and Germanic philology in Göttingen, Leipzig,
BerlinBerlin and Strassburg. He was influenced greatly by K. Muellenhoff,
who encouraged him to research the origins of Indo-European and
Germanic culture. He obtained his doctorate at Strasbourg in 1887 in
the subject of the early records of the high-Frankish language. From
1888 to 1892 he worked as a librarian. In 1896 his ideas were
expressed in his lecture "The Pre-historical Origins of the Teutons in
Germany". In 1902 he was appointed as Professor of German archaeology
at the University of Berlin. In the same year he identified the
Proto-Indo-EuropeansProto-Indo-Europeans with the north German Corded Ware culture, an
argument that gained in currency over the following two decades. He
placed the Indo-European urheimat in Schleswig-Holstein.[2]
Thereafter he published many books on the origins of the Germanic
peoples, founding the "German Prehistory Society" to promote interest
and research in the subject. He became the most famous archaeologist
in the German-speaking world, and was notable for his use of
archaeology to promote claims for an expanded German nation.
Material culture and ethnicity[edit]
Kossinna developed the theory that a regionally delimited ethnicity
can be defined by the material culture excavated from a site
(culture-historical archaeology or simply culture history theory). He
wrote, "Sharply defined archaeological cultural areas correspond
unquestionably with the areas of particular people or tribes". The
statement is known as "Kossinna's law" and forms the basis of his
"settlement-archaeology" method. Unlike modern settlement archaeology,
which refers only to individual settlements or patterns of settlement,
Kossinna meant to emphasise, in Stefan Arvidsson's words, that "a
unified set of archaeological artifacts, a 'culture', was the sign of
a unified ethnicity."[3] Thus, Kossinna's ideas were closely tied to
the German "völkisch movement".
His ideas have since been heavily criticised partly because of the
political use to which they were put, but also because of inherent
ambiguities in the method. Hans Jürgen Eggers has summarised the
problems with this argument:

There is no clear statement of the method
There is no definition of “peoples” (“Völker”) or
“tribes” (“Völkerstämme”)
There is no definition of cultural geography
Cultures are construed as monolithic blocks
There is no proof that material remains equated to ethnicities.
Continuity of ethnicity is presupposed
The self-professed method is not followed consistently, arguments
frequently rely on special cases, and excavation contexts are often
ignored
There is often arbitrary distinction of between trade and "migration"
There is no investigation of the causes of "migrations"
Detailed presentation of actual archaeological material is neglected,
e.g. generalised distribution maps are the norm
There is a tendency to ignore taphonomic aspects, i.e. possible biases
in preservation
There is a tendency to merge results from different disciplines,
notably archaeology and linguistics ("German" is a linguistic concept,
not the expression of material artefacts)
There is an influence from nationalistic and sometimes racist
prejudice, which were politically cannibalised, in particular by the
Nazis.

Despite justified criticism of the method and its application by
Kossinna, the central technique was not unique to him, but it has also
developed elsewhere in Europe and the US. Even today, it has an
important role to play in the mapping of prehistorical cultures.
Nationalistic use of archaeology[edit]

Gothic and other Germanic settlements, 1800–100 BC, according to
Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, following Kossinna's
model (1916)

Kossinna's ideas have been connected to the claim that Germanic
peoples constitute a national identity with a historic right to the
lands they once occupied, providing an excuse for later Nazi
annexations of lands in Poland and Czechoslovakia. For example, in his
article "The German Ostmark, home territory of the Germans" Kossinna
argued that Poland should be a part of the German empire. According to
him, lands, where artifacts had been found that he considered to be
"Germanic", were part of ancient Germanic territory. In 1919 he
allegedly sent a copy of his book "The Vistula Area, an ancient
homeland of the German people" to the
Versailles conferenceVersailles conference in order
to emphasise that territory claimed for the new Polish state should be
German.[4]
Kossinna's popular publications encouraged such thinking. One of his
best-known books was Die deutsche Vorgeschichte - eine hervorragend
nationale Wissenschaft (German Prehistory: a Pre-eminently National
Discipline). Here Kossinna introduced the idea that an Aryan race,
superior to other peoples, could be equated with the ancient Germans,
arguing that
GermanyGermany was the key to the unwritten history of the
ancient world. The purpose of the book is clear from the beginning, as
the dedication reads, "To the German people, as a building block in
the reconstruction of the externally as well as internally
disintegrated fatherland."[5]
Kossinna emphasised a diffusionist model of culture, according to
which cultural evolution occurred by a "process whereby influences,
ideas and models were passed on by more advanced peoples to the less
advanced with which they came into contact." He also emphasised that
such superiority was racial in character - the special gift of the
"Nordic" peoples of Germany. Kossinna’s Germanic ethnocentric
theories aimed to present a history of
GermanyGermany superior even to that
of the Roman Empire: an expansive and powerful culture that spread
civilization through heroic migrations. As he argued, "Germanic people
were never destroyers of culture, unlike the Romans - and the French
in recent times." Combined with
NaziNazi ideology, this theory gave the
perfect foundation for the belief that
GermanyGermany occupied the leading
position in world civilization.
See also[edit]

North European hypothesis
Culture history
NaziNazi archaeology
Józef Kostrzewski